Mark L. Stout Consulting is an all-purpose transportation consulting firm, specializing in finance, program management, and legislative and DOT policy. Our company has served public agencies and non-profits, big and small, all across the nation. Mark is widely-recognized as an expert whose years of experience can help organizations to break through gridlock and deliver transformative projects and innovative community enhancements.

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Friday, June 12, 2015

Happy Birthday TCI!

This month marks the 5th birthday of the
Transportation and Climate Initiative, an extraordinary collaboration of the
transportation, environment, and energy agencies of the 11 northeastern states
and DC.TCI (with staff support
from the Georgetown Climate Center) works on all sorts of issues in the
transportation and climate change arena, including finding practical ways to
facilitate greater proliferation of electric vehicles in the region (for more,
see their website here).

I have something of a “paternal” interest in the group,
having served as one of the founding facilitators, and was happy to celebrate
with members of the group during the NASTO (Northeast Association of State
Transportation Officials) annual meeting in Wilmington, DE.Wilmington was the right place for the
5-year update session, as the group was founded the last time NASTO met there
in 2010.

What I have always found most encouraging about the group is
the way it came together.The
group was not founded as a result of a new federal law or regulations, or of a
lawsuit, or of direction from the governors.It was founded because a diverse, multidisciplinary group of
agency heads from an entire region of the country decided that transportation
and climate change issues were pressing and important and that they should sit
down as a group and try to figure out ways to deal with them.At a time in our political history when
cooperation and effective action seem elusive, TCI is a cause for
optimism.